Pakistan: Student kills principal over Blasphemy law

Pakistani Police say a student shot and killed his school principal on Monday, in a dispute over the student skipping classes to attend rallies supporting the country’s strict blasphemy laws.

Sareer Ahmed, principal of the private Islamia College in the northern town of Charsadda, had an argument with one of his students for missing a number of classes.

The student then shot the principal on campus, local police chief Zahoor Afridi told Reuters.

He said the unnamed student had attended a sit-in staged by a new ultra-religious political party, Tehreek-e-Labaik, late 2017 to oppose a small change in wording to an electoral law, which it said amounted to blasphemy.

The protest, which brought the capital Islamabad to a standstill, ended in clashes between police and demonstrators that killed seven people and injured over 200.

It also led the government to back down and accept the resignation of a minister accused of blasphemy.

“Obviously now he is going to say that he (the principal) committed blasphemy. This is a very unfortunate incident,” Afridi added.

Insulting Islam’s prophet is punishable by death under Pakistani law, and blasphemy accusations stir such emotions that they are difficult to defend against. Even a rumor of blasphemy can spark mob violence.

Police have taken the student, who appeared in photographs and video to be 16 or 17 years old, into custody and filed a first information report against him.

In a video recorded during the arrest, the student can be heard defending his actions in Pashto, a regional language.

“I committed this murder and I accepted it. It was ordered by God,” he proclaimed.

There was widespread outrage across Pakistan in April 2017 when student Mashal Khan was beaten to death at his university in Mardan following a dormitory debate about religion.

Police arrested 57 people, including students and some faculty members, in connection with the killing.

There have been at least 67 murders over unproven allegations of blasphemy since 1990, according to figures from a research center and independent records kept by Reuters.

In 2011, a bodyguard assassinated Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer after he called for the blasphemy laws to be reformed.

Taseer’s killer, executed in 2017, has been hailed as a martyr by religious hardliners.